Follow Us!

Signs You're Having a Baby Boy

Sophie Bloom, M.S., L.Ac.

Expectant parents who are anxious about knowing the sex of their baby may use an array of folkloric strategies including numerology, baby position, food cravings and heart-rate of the fetus in the womb. Yet according to medical research, they may be better off observing the mother, who can offer clues herself about the baby's gender.

Assertive and Pregnant

Pregnant women who define themselves as aggressive, assertive, bold or dominant, traits which are traditionally viewed as more masculine, may be more likely to bear boys, researcher Dr. Valerie Grant noted in the scientific journal "Personality and Individual Differences." Women with this personality trait may have a higher than average amount of testosterone, which in the womb would create an environment more receptive to implantation of male than female embryos, explains website redOrbit.

Less Morning Sickness

woman with morning sickness
(Image: Ana Blazic/iStock/Getty Images)

Women who experience lighter morning sickness may be carrying boys, suggests the British Broadcasting Corporation. Morning sickness is a term for frequent nausea and vomiting during the first three months of pregnancy. According to the BBC, Stockholm's Karolinska Institute studied over a million pregnancies in Sweden between 1987 and 1995 whose mothers were admitted to hospitals for morning sickness. Of those patients, the ratio of women carrying female to male babies was 56 to 44.

Difficult Delivery

woman in labor in hospital
(Image: Cathy Yeulet/Hemera/Getty Images)

Women who experience longer and more difficult deliveries are more likely to deliver boys, according to Irish researchers Maeve A. Eogan, et al., in the "British Medical Journal." Reviewing the records of 4,070 male births and 4,005 female births that occurred between 1997 and 2000, researchers found a strong association between fetal sex and duration of labor. They hypothesized that the tendency of male babies to have larger head sizes could be a contributing factor.